


A Question of Loyalty

by Gallicenae



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, F/M, Horizon (Mass Effect), Post-Horizon (Mass Effect), Reunion, argument
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 01:53:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4687970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gallicenae/pseuds/Gallicenae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One shot. Shepard's reminiscing about her run-in with Kaidan on Horizon. The majority of Kaidan's dialogue and some of Shepard's courtesy of Bioware.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Question of Loyalty

She couldn’t believe Kaidan had rounded on her like that. One second he had been happy to see her and the next he’d blamed her for being dead, for allying with Cerberus. If he had had such little faith in her from the beginning, Corinth didn’t know why he’d even bothered to pretend he was glad she was alive in the first place.

The encounter kept playing over and over again in her mind, flashing through the fog that she’d created with the alcohol from the crew deck. Kasumi and Jack had been off helping the remaining colonists, giving Shepard and her history some space.

* * *

  

“... Thinking you were dead tore me apart. How could you put me through that?” Kaidan kept shifting his weight, searching for some solid ground to help him recover from their reunion. “Why didn’t you try to contact me? Why didn’t you let me know you were alive?”

He was angry, resentful, a bitter man wearing the skin of someone she sent out in an escape pod in what seemed only a couple weeks before. But it had been two years. Even if she told Kaidan she’d asked after him the moment she was conscious, he wouldn’t believe her. Or maybe he would, but he wouldn’t listen long enough for that hope to be expressed.

“I _was_ dead, Kaidan. It took them two years to rebuild me, and even after all that, they couldn’t be sure I was who I’d been.” Corinth rarely allowed herself the kind of sigh that fully acknowledged how tired she was, how unsure, but it came out of her in a rush now. “And I’m not. Not really.”

“I wanted to believe the rumors that you were alive, but I never expected anything like this.” His glare shot through her as destructive as the beam that had seared through the Normandy. “Cerberus, Shepard? The people who claim to have the best interests for humanity but experiment on us all the same? Why?”

All he could see was Cerberus, all he’d ever be able to see. “You think I had a choice? I had no more say in the matter than you! Do you know how many nights I’ve wondered if it wouldn’t just have been better if I’d stayed dead? People were always after my hide then, do you think it’s been any different since I came back?”

“You turned your back on everything we believed in!”

“Who are you to even suggest that? After all we learned about Cerberus, do you honestly think I would give up my free will and become their pawn?”

Kaidan threw up his hands in frustration, turning away from Corinth in his anger. He wanted her to hurt the way he had hurt over the last two years, how he was hurting now. “You betrayed the Alliance. You betrayed me.”

She reached out a hand and gently grasped his shoulder. “Kaidan you know me. You know I’d only do this for the right reasons.”

Kaidan didn’t have the heart to move her hand or shrug away from it. He had missed her touch far too deeply to brush it away now. “I want to believe you Shepard, but I don’t trust Cerberus.”

“And you think I do?”

“They have their hands all over you. Your crew, your ship, your very life.” He turned around to face her once more, to look her in the eyes with his accusation. “Maybe you feel like you owe Cerberus for saving you. Maybe you’re the one who’s not thinking straight. I still know where my loyalties lie, but you, you’ve changed.”

Corinth dropped her hand from his shoulder and clenched her fists. “Well what the fuck did you expect? I _died_. I fucking died Kaidan! It’s not like anyone can come back from something like that the same!”

He took a step back, surprised by the outburst. This was a woman he’d known, a woman he’d loved, but her movements, her speech, they were erratic and they all told him she was different.

“You think I had nightmares about suffocating before I was spaced? You think I’d drink myself to sleep every night so I wouldn’t notice just how close that vacuum was?”

“Shepard.” 

She ignored him. She didn’t want to see pity in his eyes any more than she wanted to see his bitterness. Corinth began pacing, a poor attempt to regulate the strong urge to punch something, or someone.

“Fuck you and your loyalties, Kaidan. Loyalty doesn’t count for shit anymore, to the Alliance, to the Council, not even to Cerberus.”

 

* * *

 

Kaidan had been silent for a while after that, probably realizing Corinth was fairly close to the edge of a mental break. He’d told her to take care and had gone. They’d left it badly.

Corinth looked at the image of him on her desk and wondered why she even bothered to keep it there. She emptied her glass and braced herself to stand. Kaidan was gone. She knew that he would never have conceded to join forces with her, not at this point, not with the way she was. That’s why she hadn’t asked.


End file.
